Toshiro Goto, MD
Nerima Hikarigaoka Hospital, Tokyo, Japan
The Resident Fellow Committee (RFC) of the American College of Physicians (ACP) Japan Chapter held the 6th RFC Seminar on Saturday, November 21, 2020. This seminar is held twice a year and aims to improve young physicians’ clinical skills through lectures by experts in various internal medicine fields, and the “Bullet Diagnosis Dojo” which uses ACP’s lifelong learning material, the MKSAP. The theme of this year’s workshop was “GIM x Infectious Diseases”. We invited Dr. Harumi Yano (Professor of Infectious Diseases, International University of Health and Welfare, School of Medicine) and Dr. Mikiro Kato (Department of Infectious Diseases, University of Tsukuba, School of Medicine) to join us for a very productive workshop. Although this was our first time to holding the seminar online due to COVID-19, we received over 100 participants across the country, including eager medical students, young doctors, and veteran doctors. The seminar was a great success, with many engaging questions and discussions taking place in the chat room.
The event began with a message-driven case review session featuring guest lecturer Dr. Kato, on a Nigerian patient presenting with diarrhea. The intriguing case reminded us the necessity of returning to the basic principle of infectious disease treatment whenever we encounter complex cases, which is to perform culture and determine drug susceptibility. In the second session by Dr. Yano on antimicrobial agents, Dr. Yano reiterated the importance of linking pathology, microorganisms, and antimicrobial agents to each other. We learned to take a thorough history, understand the entire clinical course, make a wide range of distinctions, and select the appropriate antimicrobial agents for a given microorganism. At the “Bullet Diagnosis Dojo,” we presented a series of four case questions based on the famous ACP’s official question book MKSAP. Participants received educational comments and tips on each question, which deepened their understanding on infectious disease medicine.
RFC will continue to organize events where young doctors and medical students can learn medical knowledge and techniques useful for tomorrow’s clinical practice that will help them achieve a higher level of excellence. We will also continue to strive to be a platform for those who wish to gain clinical experience abroad. If you are interested, please consider joining us.
